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Up and down all night, the NOAA radio kept going off. Severe thunderstorm warning. Tornado Watch, Tornado watch, Thunderstorm warning... Kiss your Butt goodbye. I was watching the Cameras off and on most of the night and couldn't get back to sleep, when I did, the Screaming Alarm from the NOAA would wake me again. Tornado Watch... your world could end...

Don't get me wrong, I could have turned off the switch on the NOAA radio, gone to sleep and slept right thru... but I'm grateful for the dang thing. OKC took a beating last night, two and a half hours North West of us... we just got badly needed rain.

What I didn't get ... sleep. LOL... (yawn... )

Rather be tired, and alive, than join Dorothy in OZ.....
Every time the alarm would scream, the dog would give it a dirty look.

Just so you know, the NIGHT NOAA alerts are the worst. You can't go outside and watch, hard to see the funnel clouds coming at night. Can't see if the sky is green or the Wall clouds are building. We have to listen for the SIREN a mile away in the ghost town... then run for the shelter. It's okay, it's just 30 yards from the back door.

It is good to have a shelter to run to.

Surprised you are getting that kind of weather in November and glad you are safe. Around here nothing but constant blue sky since first of October with temps from mid 60's to a day or two of near 80. Loving it!

Tornado warnings right now... Tornado on the ground in SE portion of the county. Miss T came and got me out of the shop, we are watching the radar, and listening to NOAA. So far so good. No great loss... I had to scrap the scales, the liners wouldn't stick. The copper bolsters look good though. Pics later.

Well, the warning has ended, but thankfully the rain continues.
We sure need the rain.

I saw the destruction in OK on the news this morning and no, you didn’t mess up! Glad you avoided the worst of it.

Looks like you are well prepared, but that still doesn't get rid of that feeling of angst in your gut.
Glad you're both safe.

Reminds me of “Incoming!!” and running for the bunker a few years back.

We all seek shelter from the storm and wouldn't you know it, Marine has it.
I like the flowers planted around it. What's better is that you and Tina will be safe.

Quiet night last night other than the rain... Up early this morning to vote, arrived a little after 7am when the polls opened. The little church was packed. With the four poll workers, I'll bet there were twelve, maybe thirteen people...

Home by seven thirty.
We Voted.

Centaur wrote: ↑

Tue Nov 05, 2024 8:19 am

Reminds me of “Incoming!!” and running for the bunker a few years back.

When we cleaned out the bunkers one day and found several snake skins where the cobra's had shed them.
After that we chose not to go into the bunkers but to lay along side of them. All I could think of was piling in at a dead run
right into a cobra in a bad mood.

Do you have the shelter set up “luxurious”? Beer fridge, lounge chairs etc? I guess you don’t have to be down there for more than a few hours to a half day type thing? We don’t have tornadoes here, but we have fires. Biiiig fires. At least we usually get a bit of notice and you can see them coming. We can’t use a shelter like yours as the heat and lack of breathable air would take you out. You’d have to go very deep and have a closed ventilation system.

Redthies wrote: ↑

Wed Nov 06, 2024 12:05 pm

Do you have the shelter set up “luxurious”? Beer fridge, lounge chairs etc? I guess you don’t have to be down there for more than a few hours to a half day type thing? We don’t have tornadoes here, but we have fires. Biiiig fires. At least we usually get a bit of notice and you can see them coming. We can’t use a shelter like yours as the heat and lack of breathable air would take you out. You’d have to go very deep and have a closed ventilation system.

The thing is meant to save us in an emergency, but Miss T had to make it pretty (er)


Then, every time she thought about it, she decided there was something she needed to add, to make it less like an isolation cell. She ordered:

Two folding chairs after we had to sit on the cooler we used for dry storage the first time. After sitting in those for over an hour the next time, she ordered very NICE loungers. Both are stored on either side of the steps. That, along with the Bucket. Um....

Five Gallon Bucket with screw on top. (In case of emergency, you can't leave for any reason when the winds are 100 mph sideways.) Paired with that, baby wipes and paper towels and TP. Yeah, that kind of Emergency.



We have blankets (for winter) with pillows (We have been down in the hole for as much as four hours when we had long lines of storms.) The Dog has a bed down there too. Small Westie so her bed doesn't take up much room. This stuff is stored in the cooler as dry storage, and to keep the mice and bugs out. Along with Towels. Towels? the Tornadoes usually come during Thunderstorms.


In the dry box you'll also find A couple battery powered lights and fans for air circulation (temps stay pretty constant since it's buried) There is also a snack box, with bottled water, Rice Crispy Treats and a few other small snacks. Again, in most cases, we are down there for an hour or so.

Whenever I work in the shelter, Fiona Supervises...


Here is the view down the stairs for a feel for the size inside.


It's not that small for just a couple people but if we had company, and there were four or five. We'd fit, but it would feel close pretty quick. Luckily, Tornadoes pass pretty quickly in most cases. The warnings usually come and go unless they stall, or like that one time, we got a line of them.

When we go on Tornado watch, I have a Jump kit that goes out the door contains our phones, the NOAA radio which will run on the batteries for six hours or so and DOES get a signal in the hole if we put it UNDER the corner where the intake air vent is. Don't want to stick the antenna in the turbine vent, that thing is MOVING during high winds.

Have a tool set in there in case I have to disassemble the door, and always take a firearm in case looters are outside when we emerge. (Not likely in our area, but.... ) BoyScout, Marine, Former LE... I take more than ONE.

I have my stone Marine Corps Bulldog Gargoyle Guarding the Place. He doesn't mind. He's made of concrete.


I usually take my Kindle to have something to read, Tina plays with the dog and they keep one another calm.

When we ordered the thing, they asked if we wanted them to plumb it for electric. Extra $100. What did that entail? Um, then putting a piece of pipe in the mold so we could run a wire thru the side about halfway up one wall. We discussed it. Tina said that we wouldn't likely be in the dang thing that long, and if we were in there an extended period, the power would likely be out.

I said, "We have a generator."

If the tornado eats the house, it will eat the genny first..."
Her eye roll, while annoying, was an editorial statement. It conveyed an insulting phrase rhyming with lum bass.


WE didn't wire the thing for power at that time, and so far haven't bothered. We don't go down there to party, although I understand from some of the kids, they hang out in their parents shelters.

Tina has said something about painting the interior walls so they aren't so dreary while we sit and stare at them.
"Beach Scene? Mountains?" I asked.
"A COLOR..." She said. "Duh."



lumass.

Awesome! I figured it would be a bit bigger, thinking what was showing was just the stairs, but I guess it doesn’t have to bigger. I had visions of a cross between these two:

^^^^^^^^^^

Now that’s a bunker.

This one is better....
https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/3970 ... 2102_zpid/